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There are several forms
of Scottish Dancing around today, requiring differing levels of ability
and appealing to different sections of the population. Some have been
exported all around the world, some are social, some are competitive,
some have been lost in Scotland, and are now making their reappearance
from the colonies to where they where taken by émigrés. For a quick
history of dancing in Scotland, see
here. They are all danced to Scotland's wonderful music - reels,
jigs and the quintessentially Scottish Strathspey - and are all great
exercise - they beat a trip to the gym any day!
Most people in Scotland
will have been to a ceilidh
at some point in their lives. These are taught in schools, danced at
weddings and Burns suppers, and if you know where to look, you can
generally find one to go to most weeks, at least in the central belt.
These dances are fairly simple, a mixture of round the room dances and
set dances, and danced purely sociably. The repertoire
is limited, there is no formal technique or central authority
controlling the dance form, and (a big plus for many people) you can do
them when drunk. Indeed, one of the popular regular ceilidhs in
Edinburgh, the Caley
ceilidh is run by the Caledonian Brewery.
Scottish
Country Dancing is another matter. This is again mostly sociable,
although it is often performed, and there are even occasional
competitions (which have a mixed response). Scottish Country Dancing is
done in sets, typically of 3, 4 or 5 couples, arranged either in two
lines (men facing ladies) or in a square, and involves the dancers
dancing a sequence of set formations enough times to bring them back to
their starting positions. New dances are being written all the time (Alan
Paterson's DanceData database puts the current count at nearly
9500), and the technique is being honed continuously so that at its
highest levels it is now an extremely athletic, balletic dance form (not
that the majority of social dancers take it as seriously as that...).
The level of complexity in the dances has risen greatly from the reels
of the 19th century, and even friends who would otherwise drink like
fishes keep of the alcohol when dancing - they need their wits about
them. SCD is very sociable, and thanks to the
Royal Scottish Country Dance Society is sufficiently popular and
uniform that an SCD dancer can pack their dance shoes and be welcomed by
a local group almost
anywhere in the world. The extra complexity and technique makes it
far more interesting than ceilidh dancing to my mind.
Highland
dancing is equally wide-spread, but far more competitive. These
dances, such as the Highland Fling, and the Sword Dance, are generally
solo performance dances, and are mostly danced competitively (although
there are a minority, such as myself, who just learn and dance them for
interest and during performances). With the constant pressure of
competition, standards are extremely high, and they also enjoy a standardization
through the SOBHD, the SOHDA and the NZAHD (among others) which has
allowed their spread throughout the world. As well as the Highland
dances, the National dances, such as the Lilt, the Flora and the Blue
Bonnets are similar and danced by the same dancers. I'm not enough of an
expert to say what the difference is - they all seem to be in a similar
vein to me. Their are a few dances done by more than one dancer, the
Foursome Reel, the Twasome and the Broadswords being three examples.
Cape
Breton step dancing is also (I believe) mainly solo dancing. This
dance form was lost in Scotland, but preserved in Nova Scotia by the
Scottish emigrants, and has recently started making a comeback in
Scotland. It is a form of percussive hardshoe dance, similar in sound to
the hardshoe Irish dances made popular by Riverdance (though aficionados
will probably tell me that's all wrong and the two are nothing like each
other). I think it is mainly danced for performance and in sessions like
(or with) Scottish music. But I'm not an expert, so I may have got that
all wrong.
The final form of
dancing, Reeling,
is probably the closest form of Scottish dancing to how dances were done
100-150 years ago. It is most popular among the aristocracy and the
military, traveling the world with them (but at least until recently,
not really spreading much outside those communities). The dancing style
is more rolling and less balletic than Scottish Country Dancing,
although more defined than ceilidh dancing, and the etiquette of reeling
is very different to that of SCD. The reeling repertoire is a subset of
the dances enjoyed by Scottish Country dancers. Read the background to
the creation of the "War Dance", The
51st Country Dance.
So there you go - a quick
tour of Scottish Dancing today. For more information on any particular
dance form, check out the appropriate link:
Or go to the Grand
Chain web site, highlights from which include:
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